


Match

by thedevilchicken



Category: Goal! (Movies)
Genre: Ficlet, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-27
Updated: 2007-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:38:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4261965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newcastle is like some kind of crazy dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Match

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written 27 August 2007. Takes place after the first movie and before the second.

Newcastle is like some kind of crazy dream he didn’t know he had. It’s full of food that makes no sense - he _still_ hasn’t discovered exactly what black pudding is - and accents that sometimes might as well be another language completely. There’s a black and white shirt with his name on it waiting at every game, hanging in the changing room between Harris and Kluivert. Thousands know his name, and not just in the Toon, thanks to that goal against Liverpool. It’s a dream, and he’s living it. 

But there are other dreams, at night. Sometimes he dreams of the night they left Mexico, so young and so scared. Sometime he dreams of the sun in LA, the heat as they played, the team he almost always won with. There’s an imagined future, too, born of something one of the reserve team players said once, about being illegal in LA - it worries him sometimes that his family’s still there, he hopes he can bring them over soon. And then there’s the times he dreams of his father dead or alive. 

He dreams him dead in a garden, surrounded by flowers, dreams his family dressed in black. He dreams him living, at the wheel of that truck he saved and then stole to buy, dreams him digging, dreams him with that frown that never seemed to leave his face before Santi left for England. He dreams him and he wakes up shouting, ever time. And usually, Gavin’s there. 

If Santi doesn’t wake himself then Gavin does, shaking his shoulder or poking him in the side repeatedly until he calms down and opens his eyes. Gavin’s okay about the rude awakening unless there’s a girl there, in which case an unamused frown takes the place of his otherwise ever-present cheeky grin, but otherwise, if he’s alone, he’ll just slip into the bed beside him in his sweats or his boxers or whatever he’s fallen asleep in tonight. He’ll settle down right up close, tucking the sheets around himself like it’s the most natural thing in the world and commence prattling, about the time he signed his first contract and then couldn’t sleep right for a month or someone he roomed with in the England U21s who had night terrors. Compared with that, he says, Santi’s not so bad. 

Sometimes after that he’ll kiss him, and sometimes not. Santi remembers the first time he did and how he thought he must be drunk - maybe he was a bit but that wasn’t why he did it. Gavin laughed afterwards and told him to go back to sleep; then a few nights later he did it again. Santi didn’t know what to make of it, really, but in the end he stopped questioning, wrapped an arm around Gavin’s waist as he did it the next time and just relaxed; Gavin chuckled as he gave his arse a squeeze and they fell asleep like that. But they never fuck till the morning; the first time was surprising, waking up hard and pressed to Gavin’s thigh, embarrassed as all hell and tomato-red with it but Gavin just laughed that laugh and made Santi smile despite himself, even as Gavin’s hand brushed over his stomach and cupped him through his briefs. It didn’t take much to make him come and Gavin watching him as he did just made him blush harder. Then they just showered and ate and went out to training. 

It’s been more than that since then, they’ve been naked together, hands on each other, flushed, respectively embarrassed and amused. Gavin’s smile as his fingers brushed his cock that first time made him snicker and they almost laughed their way through the entire fumble, but the times after that were a bit more serious, one morning they woke up earlier than Gavin liked to believe really exists and he padded off to his own room, rubbing his arms and cursing the cold all the way only to come straight back with lube and condoms, the sight of which made Santi blush even more than usual and almost bury himself under the duvet. They played around for a while but in the end Gavin pushed inside him, awkward and still talking even then, if a little breathlessly. Santi’s fairly sure that was the only thing that kept him from dying of embarrassment. 

The first time was awkward, thrusts that weren’t close to synchronised, thrusts at the wrong angle that made one or both of them yelp then burst out laughing. It got better after that, the more they did it, before or after training, after nights out, in the middle of nights in. Away games. They just have so much fun, the unlikely friends, Santi keeping Gavin on the straight and narrow, Gavin teaching Santi everything he needs to know about the English game in between mini-tournaments of Pro Evo. 

Gavin wakes him in the night from a dream he can’t remember, mock-coos at him in terrible Spanish as he crawls in beside him. The thing is, Santi’s dreams don’t scare him, not in the traditional sense of the word, and they both know it; he’s just as scared of that life he might have had had in LA as Gavin is of mediocrity. 

It’s times like these he thinks they’re maybe not such a bad match after all.


End file.
